The first Tomb Raider game that I've ever played was Tomb Raider from 2013 and I enjoyed it but I have always been a bigger fan of the Uncharted franchise, especially because of Uncharted 4. This means that I've never play the first 3 Tomb Raider games. So I don't have any nostalgia which could influence my rating for this game.
What I liked about the remaster is how easily you can switch between old and new graphic. Small details like blood from a dead crocodile that paints the water red or water dripping from Lara's body made me appreciate the improved graphics. Also yes the Dinos level was indeed my favorite one but the T-Rex was kinda underwhelming simply because I was able to kill the Rex within 30 seconds after discovering it.
The new lighting can be problematic because sometimes it was way too dark or keys turn invisible. The puzzle in general are rather repetitive and mostly consist out of finding levers or jumping between platforms. This leads me the biggest problem, which are the bad camera and jump controls. If you decide to use the "modern controls" then the camera will be send into a frenzy in which the camera spins around randomly. Try to beat a level with huge amount of platforming like this. Lara also often decided to not grab a ledge in time or simply refused to jump because the jump input was not registered in time. The manual save feature makes this game a lot easier. I've died so much and that's primarily due to the bad camera and the very dated controls. The cistern level got me softlocked because I used wrong key first, it is so stupid that this is even possible. After running around for 4 hours searching for a way forward I deciced to use the level skip feature which is luckily still in the game. Also no Platinum Trophy on PS5 but PS4 what's up with that? Overall a decent remaster but you can really feel how old this game is, the bad controls and the camera that gets tossed around randomly made it hard to enjoy the remaster Tomb Raider I for someone like me that has never played the original. But I think it's a great remaster if you play it as a child.

Games I finished in 2024 ranked

Amnesia: The Bunker is the first game of the Amnesia franchise that I finished, even though I own the first two games through PS+. I just never really got to play them and the first time that this game caught my attention was when I played the demo. First thing which confused me was that the game only has a old gen version. Why not current gen? Besides that the game was quite scary at times and I had goosebumps frequently. Which is a pleasant suprise for a horror veteran like I would call myself. Because many of the modern horror games feel the same or are just not scary. If I had to compare it to one game than it would be Alien Isolation. Don't get me wrong, Alien Isolation is still on a whole 'nother level. But Amnesia: The Bunker also relies heavily on sounddesign and that you as the player are very quiet so that the monster is not alerted. The isolated setting in the bunker worked great and the monster just behaves and feels very similar to the Xenomorph from Alien Isolation..
But you can clearly feel that it's not a AAA game because the performance has a few problems like stuttering and freezing whenever you enter a bigger area. I also had a some crashes which is frustating because there is no autosave mechanic. So I always had to replay from the last manual save point which the game only has 2 of. That wouldn't be a problem if the controls wouldn't be so clunky on the PS5. But these are just some minor in short but also very atmospheric and tense game. I'm really glad that it was a "real" monster and that it didn't had the generic "It's only in your head" twist at the end which I"ve seen so often , especially in a horror game with a setting during a war. But I liked the setting this time around and never felt save while playing Amnesia : The Bunker because the monster could attack at any moment. Maybe I really have to go back and finally play the first two games.

#4 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023

This the third game of the franchise that I played, yes I played 4 then 2 and now 1. Don't judge me. The core of story is rather simple, you play a character named Harry who is driving his daughter Cheryl to Silent Hill. On the winding mountain roads, he sees something that looks like girl on the road and swerves to avoid hitting her. After he wakes up, his daughter is gone. So you're goal is to find your daughter Cheryl. This is the easy to understand part of the story, the rest of it is a lot of interpretation and speculation which I liked. The game focuses more on the characters, storyline and building a tense atmosphere than action. The sound design and soundtrack are great and help to immerse yourself into world of Silent Hill. Graphics and facial expressions aren't that great and the biggest problem in my opinion is the combat, the tank controls can be really tiring but the fact that I had 190 Pistol bullets left at the end of the game (which might be the result of me just running away like the coward that I am from most of the enemies) made it a little bit easier. All the "cons" can be easily overlooked because they are just relics from the time when the game was released. Overall I really enjoyed Silent Hill and this might be my second favorite game of the franchise after Silent Hill 2 because the game teases the players imagination with grotesque images and genuinely creepy effects and slowly builds up tension and suspense that way.
The story is wonderfully crafted and the strong atmosphere are the biggest strength of this game. huge recommendation.

Blood West is a stealth FPS game set in the Wild West era where weird west legends meet eldritch horror. Which is already a really unique and interesting setting and to be honest, I really like it. You have also such vast variety of enemies and different weapons, it's crazy. Each new chapter confronts you with new types of monster and each new enemy has a different behavior which means you always have to adapt and be careful whenever you encounter a new enemy. You never know what crazy stuff these enemies can do and you can easily find yourself swarmed by eldritch monsters. However, the game never forces a playing style on the player, so you can always decide how you want to play the game without any disadvantages. When you die, you will respawn at the trader and as punishment you will get a curse which gets worse when you die again. Two things that I probably adore the most are the voice acting and the art design. Both fit the tone of the game extremely well. So since Blood West is a stealth FPS game, the stealth part must be the biggest strength, right ? No not really, it felt a bit random at times and how easily the enemies can see or especially hear you can be frustrating. The monsters also can't hear gunshots, which was weird but I understand why the devs chose this route because that way you can at least use guns without big drawbacks. Overall a really fantastic game with a beautiful art style and really unique enemy design. Each new chapter will introduce you to dozens of new monsters and you must adapt to each new enemy you encounter and find the best way to defeat the monster without wasting much recourses. I can see myself easily replaying Blood West because of it's vast variety of weapons, monsters and perks. It's not an easy game, it is a challenging game but it was still a ton of fun and it's impressive what the developers have achieved.

#5 in my List of Top 5 Games of 2023

Games I finished in 2023 Ranked

Alone in the Dark is the grandfather of all survival horror games. As a huge fan of the genre and the Resident Evil series, playing this game was long overdue, luckily I finished it just in time for the remake. While we're at it, a remake is definitely needed. Not just because of the technical aspects like the bad resolution, awful controls, dozens of useless items which gets annoying 'cause it was combined with limited inventory and the combat is also pretty bad. Once an enemy manages to land a hit, you will be staggered and most of the time you can't do anything against it until you are dead. The steam version also has a few problems for example the window shrinking when you minimize it and the visuals are very pixelated when you maximize the game on a modern monitor. But I always had to laugh when Edward punched a zombies with the loudest SMACK sound effect. I was also pleasantly surprised by the the voice acting. I didn't expect the game have voice acting and it was very well-done. I really appreciated the voice acting because the information in the notes was often necessary to defeat certain monsters and I just hate it when I have to read so much in games. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, it has a great atmosphere, cool monster design and I see much potential for the remake. But it was really short, at max you probably need around 4-5. I'm glad I finally beat this game because of its historical value and importance to my favorite gaming genre, survival horror.


Games I finished in 2024 ranked

God of War Ragnarök is an improvement in every way possible, it's the sequel we deserved and after over 40 hours I finally finished this Masterpiece. The set pieces are mindblowing, I think half of my storage capacity is now occupied by screenshots of this game. I also absolutely adore the soundtrack, I can't praise it enough, I got goosebumps every time I heared it. The narrative is amazing and the fact that the whole game is a one-shot elevates the whole experience, the cutscenes are exceptional.
I wasn't a big fan of Atreus in the first game because of his god complex. But they really did a 180 with him, I enjoyed his arc and gameplay a lot. The chemestry between Atreus and Kratos is great but also between him and Angrboda. I like her a lot and she's my favorite new character. I never cried so many times in a video game and thb. I Iost count. When a simple hug between two characters can make me tear up then there is no other way than to call this one of the best games of the last few years.

Top 5 games of 2022

Sony's first party games ranked

This was my first real Souls Game, that I've finished on my own. So I'm pretty much a noob regarding that. I enjoyed it so much that I also got the platinum trophy for it. The game just blew my mind. The open world is so detailed and alive. In every corner is something to explore but also always something that wants to kill you. The lore/story is really interesting and well thought out. Everywhere you can find pieces of it and put it together like a puzzle. The Boss-fights are so intense and fun. One of the best gaming experiences of the last few years. Here and there are some technical issues but overall amazing game

The amount of details and people in the City is insane. You pass a pillory which is empty and the second time you pass it, a person is standing there. The city is filled with life, everywhere are people doing different stuff like for example the marketplace, it just feels so alive. Everywhere people are selling/buying stuff, having conversations or just enjoying their day. It's those little details that separate a good game from a great game. It really feels like a real "Next Gen" Game. Technically it's a bit rough around the edges, I had a few framedrops here and there. Sometimes one of the NPCs got stuck or straight up disappeared so I was forced to reload. The narrative is a masterpiece, the story is so well written, the characters are amazing and the chemestry Hugo and Amicia is really something special and very rare. You don't see that very often in the video game industry. The only examples I can think of are Joel and Ellie from TLOU and the characters from Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy from last year. A Plague Tale Requiem is one of my favorite games of this year and cements Asobo Studio's position as one of the new leads in narrative game development. Halfway through the game I knew how it will probably end but I was denial and still hoped that it will end another way which perfectly mirrored Amicia arc in this game.

The Callisto Protocol is the most atmospheric game this year and the sounddesign is something else. Especially with Playstation's Pulse 3D Headset. This game is really immersive with a good headset. So I highly recommend to use one. There are so many different environmental sounds like biophage crawling through the vents, security units patroling the corridors. I was so damn paranoid and on the edge the whole time. You never know where the next danger lurks.

What was that noise that I just heard? Was that a biophage who could jump out of the vent right next to me at any second, maybe just a noise from facility or my imagination after all? I like the variety of the environments/levels. The visuals are also really great and the game looks absolutely stunning. The combat is okay I guess, at the beginning it's a little bit repetetive but when you get a few weapons it gets better. But it gets really difficult when you encouter more than two enemies. The Callisto Protocol does not invent much new, but it doesnt have to. It takes established pieces of game design, puts its own spin on things and creates a really great game out of it. The story is interesting enough to keep me interested and the characters Jacob Lee and Dani Nakamura are well written. Voice acting and the motion capturing are both really great and the performance by Karen Fukuhara in particular stood out to me. She cute and is such a talent actress. She was the only positive thing in Suicide Squad (2016), is one of my favorite characters of The Boys and now probably my favorite character in this game.

The only things I noticed negatively are the amount of times you have to crawl through vents or shimmy through a gap, it's insane how often you have to do that. The bosses, you encounter one boss I think 4 times without a change so it's the same bossfight over and over again. The other one 2 times. The second time it has a second form. But both of them look really basic. The creature design in general isn't really special.
The other thing is the save mechanic, it's the worst save mechanic which I have ever encountered in a video game and it's one of the biggest lies in the history of video games. All the way up there along side Todd Howard saying "sixteen times the detail". It only saves at checkpoints even when you save manually. So if you level up your weapons before a bossfight and then get your ass kicked you have to level up everything again. This wouldn't be a big problem normally but there are a few really tough sections and it gets really annoying after a while.
The performance is great and I never had any problems on my PS5.
Overall there are a few flaws but they are not a really big problem and it's all in all a great game. I would also call it an action game and not a horror game. I'm excited for the story DLC because of the Cliffhanger and I'm hoping for a sequel because I can see the potential.

Writing this review because it's one of my favorite games of all time. I already played it on release and replayed it this year again.

I can't recommend this game enough. The story & lore are amazing, both are silent and more show than tell, the game lets the players think about it for themselves what could actually be going on. It has amazing visuals and the art and style of not only the characters but also the scenery is simply stunning. I also really like the soundtrack. I find myself keep coming back to it. Little Nightmares shows perfectly that a main character doesn't need to talk to make you feel connected to them. One of the most interesting, immersive and visually beautiful games I've ever played. Little Nightmares is an experience that everyone needs to experience honestly!

The Forest is one of my favorite survival games and so I was obviously really excited for it's sequel. I've been following the development from Sons of the Forest closely and played it during it's early acces phase rather sporadically. Now the full Version has been released for roughly 2 month and I've finally beat the game with my friend.
Our overall experience was positive but we both agreed on the fact that Sons of the Forest doesn't reach the heights from it's predecessor. Due to the Map being way too big and rather empty, traversing it often feels like a slog. Yes they added vehicles like the Golfcart or the Knight V which are both cool additions but using these vehicles can get annonying because you are running into trees all the time. There are also less animals and less blueprints, examples for this would be the missing of boats. I found the story also less compelling then the story from the first game because it lacked motivation. Which was better executed in The Forest with the big hole in the middle of the map being a core driving factor for mystery and your reason to explorer.

But it's not all bad, the overall production value is higher, every mechanic feels more fleshed out and the many new animations are a great addition. The performance is also way better then in early access and the game runs way smoother. I also liked the improved building system and it was just fun building your base with your friends. But the problem was that there is no real reason for your to build a base. Since you can carry every important item in your inventory and exploring takes so much time due to the size of the map that you are rarely at your base. My favorite new additions would be Kelvin and Virginia, both characters were very useful even if the AI wasn't the best at times. The ending that you get with Virginia was also hilarious and I would have never expected that you impregnate her

All in all still a really fun game with beautiful graphics, a solid survival foundation and it's even more fun with your friends. The story is rather lackluster because I think finding your own son is more compelling then finding a random billionaire.

Games I finished in 2024 ranked

My favorite survival games ranked

Platinum Trophies Exhibition

Aliens: Dark Decent is the next Alien game after the masterpiece called Alien Isolation and a fun CO-OP shooter called Aliens: Fireteam Elite. But sadly it is way worse than both of them.
So yea I'm really disappointed. I think I have to warn everyone first because this game has a “feature” that made me drop the game after spending 19h playing this game. So what's this great feature? It's a death clock, which wasn't really communicated or explained at the beginning of the game. This means I played 19 hours (which I didn't enjoy, I explaine later why) just to get a "game over, please return to main menu" screen. No cutscene or anything like that which I find really lazy and cheap. So I was forced to pretty much restart a whole new game or reload an older save file and rush through the game with no guarantee that it will be enough. I'm a player who loves to explore every corner of a game and I like doing side missions which I realized now is not possible because the game punishes you for this in the end. The next problem is that the whole game design doesn't really work with that kind of mechanic because it often feels like you don't have much control over what is happening. The controls are really bad, inputs are not registered or way too late which lead to your death. The AI is also not great and another big problem is that you control the whole squad and you can't really control the individual Marines. I also often had to reload segments because the Marines didn't hit the target and after doing the same segment two or three times without changing my tactics they somewho hit the target. So a huge part is just trial and error which was not fun. The Marines also died like flies when you they are in close combat which makes sense but because of that it hard to fight back once 2-3 Aliens came closer. Due to the camera positioning and controls it was often even harder and too confusing because too much was happening on screen and playing this with controller doesn't help either.

It was also annyoing to hear same three voice lines over and over again and often the messages on screen said your are safe when your are not just to throw three more Xenomorphs into my unprepared face which then killed me so I had to replay 30 min. again. I also didn't get why there was no "continue from last save" when you are killed. You always have to go back to the main menu to reload the last save file which killed the atmosphere a little bit for me. It's sad because the atmosphere is one of the strength and I also like the motion tracker, it builds up a lot of tension just like I remember from Alien Isolation.

But the face animatios are not up to date and none of the characters are really interesting. Because of that Aliens Dark Decent is overall not a great game and many game design decisions are really frustrating. Until the "game over" screen at the end I would have probably rated this 3/5 but the "death clock" feature was the final nail in the coffin for me. I think this feature would have worked as a feature for a harder difficulty or a new game plus run but not for a first run. I understand what they were trying to do and sometimes the game some satisfying moments similar to the soulslike genre. But the game mechanics doesn't work well with the death clock, controls are not very accurate which make this a frustrating experience. As a huge fan of the movie Alien and the game Alien Isolation it was really disappointing to witness another bad entry.

So please just give me Alien Isolation 2 and stop creating stupid shooters out of this IP, thank you.

We all know and love the first game so I'll try to keep it short.

So was this remake necessary?

No not at all, I wouldn't even call it a remake and if you compare The Last of Us Part I to other remakes like the Resident Evil 2 Remake then you notice really quick that you could call this game a bad remake and some evil tongues would call it a cash grab because the remaster still holds up really well.

Is the worth the price?

Normally I have no problems to pay full price for games that I enjoy. But for a remake which adds not much new and with the remaster in mind it's really hard to justified the price.

But why did I buy it then you might ask?

First off I bought this Remake for 40€ instead of 79,99€, I also didn't pay for the remaster or the PS3 version. I got the remaster for free via PS+ and it also always bothered me the I never got the platinum trophy because of the shitty factions mode. Another reason why I wanted to play the remake is that Ellie and Joel are among my favorite characters of all time. I was so excited to experience the really great story with these two characters again including top notch facial animation, great voice acting and stunning visuals. I absolutely love the little details and how Ellie interacts with the environment like when she failed to whistle and later masters it so she can annoy the shit out of Joel. These little details make the characters feel so much more alive and make them stand out from others. All these were enough reasons for me to buy the game via sale. Ofc all other pros and cons regarding the gameplay are still valid because the didn't change anything which means the gameplay is still really outdated. But I'm still glad that this "remake" exist and I enjoyed replaying it a lot.

Yea so much for "I'll keep it short"...

Scorn is an atmospheric survival horror puzzle game heavily inspired by the artist HR Giger. Though it's marketed as a horror game, it isn't really scary but
even more disgusting, it really celebrates the gore and does not hold back.
I'm such a huge fan of the work from HR Giger and his work, the Xenomorph especially. Everyone who knows me, knows that Alien is my favorite horror movie and Alien Isolation my favorite horror game. So obviously I was really excited when this game was announced all the way back in 2014 and I've been following the development ever since. Scorn had a lot of pumps in the road including a failed Kickstarter campaign. I didn't watch much gameplay because I didn't want to spoil the myself the mystery which surrounds the world of Scorn. My expectations were quite high after that demo but also knew that Scorn won't be your typical horror shooter.

So the question is did Scorn fulfill my expectation?
Yes and no, Scorn is a massive work of art with impressive images and a really great atmosphere but it's not really a great game and yet one of the most interesting gaming experiences of this year. Scorn has no dialogues and no text, the story is experienced entirely via environmental storytelling and much like the world of Little Nightmares it's more show than tell and leaves the story up to the players for interpretation. Gameplay wise it is rather shallow. You have the typical weapons like a grenade launcher, shotgun and a pistole. But the fights and shooter elements are the biggest weakness of Scorn. They are slow, sluggish, really frustrating.
and boring. But you can avoid most of the enemies. The boss fight is the climax of the boring shooter parts of the game and the worst boss fight I experienced in a long time, it's just the same Boss fight twice. When you look past the boring shooter elements you notice that Scorn is absolutely beautiful and the art design is stunning. Technically, Scorn makes a really good impression. I had no performance problems, I had to replay a chapter only once because I fell into the abyss and my character was stuck there. The puzzle are okay, some are a little bit too easy and some are really frustrating. The stunning world and art design and the great atmosphere are the strength of Scorn, the animation are also really good and I enjoyed the way they told the story and that it was more show than tell. I can understand if some people find this game boring but it doesn't deserve the hate. If you are a fan of HR Giger and Beksiński and like atmospheric horror puzzle games with an interesting way to tell the story, then you should maybe try this game.

I've never been the biggest fan of the first Dragons Dogma game. Tbh. I never finished the game yet I still deciced to play the second one. I overall enjoyed Dragons Dogma 2 but I do think it has some major flaws and no I'm not talking about the microtransactions. Because for everyone who has lived under a rock, Capcom has done this for years and never anyone complained. Not for Monster Hunter World and not for Resident Evil 4 Remake. And why even would I buy mtx to ruin the experience that the developers had intended. Anyway this out of the way, I like the character creator and it's probably one of the most detailed ones I've seen in recent years. The climbing monsters was also fun and it reminded me of games like Shadow of the Colossus. I liked that your Main-Pawn has their own voice, it gives you the feeling that your Main-Pawn is an actual side character. But that the character of the Pawns is just not there. Because they keep saying the same lines over and over again and the dialogue is boring bin general. The problem comes with the core gameplay loop itself. Most of the quests are Fetch-Quest which maybe was intentional because selling point of Dragons Dogma 2 is the traveling that you do during the quests, almost like on a roadtrip where the journey is the goal. The side activities are also useless, you can buy everyone a round of beer or go to the local fun house. What does it do? Nothing, no buffs and no rewards. When I pay 20.000 gold to sleep with someone than I at least what a cool cutscene but no there is nothing.

Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno said that "the traveling is only boring when your game is boring" and I agree but the problem with Dragons Dogma 2 is that the gameplay loop gets indeed boring fast. Because you have these dynamic encounters during your travels between cities where you have to fight Orcs or Ogre. At first fighting them is fun but the more I play the more I noticed that I mostly fought the same enemies at the same locations over and over again. The result is that the fighting gets repetitive very quick and the time between fighting one horde of orcs and the next one was often very small. What did I do ? I told my pawns to wait somewhere and then ran past all of the dynamic encounters. So the core gameplay loop is boring, the characters and quest aren't memorable at all because the dialogues mostly consist out of pressing "next" and in the whole game there were maybe two opportunities to choose your answer. Since the dialogue system is rather shallow, the romancing feels also very trivial. Same can be said about the housing, you can buy 2 houses but you can't customize them. They are only there for you to rest and customization in general isn't a big part of the game. Armor is locked to the vocations which means "Fashion Souls" is not possible. This may not be a problem for some people but I'm just a sucker for customizing stuff and it's a missed opportunity in my opinion. A good example is probably the fight against the Dragon Endboss. It kidnaps a character that supposed to be Important to your character based on affinity. The problem is that there is no way for you to tell how high the affinity between your character and the NPC is. Which lead to a hilarious situation where I thought I was romancing Doireann and expected the Dragon to take her hostage but instead that stupid Lizard took her brother for whom I did like two quests. So the Dragon Endboss took a character hostage that I didn't care about and then gave me the decision to fight him or just walk away. I decided to just walk away and got one of the most underwhelming endings in recent years. This just showed that the story and characters are extremly boring and there aren't really any main-characters. The while storyline with the false Arisen also didn't get resolve at the end. So after that I reloaded my save file, fought the Dragon and got an ending almost identical to the first one. Which disappointed quite a bit and is reminiscent for the rest of the game. Because Dragons Dogma 2 is overall a rather disappointing game with gameplay mechanics that feel rather shallow like the romancing, housing, activities or the dialogues and a core gameplay loop that gets annonying fast. As said before the story and characters aren't there. All of them are really shallow or have like 2 lines of dialogue. But I liked that the game creates situations that are different for every player s and which you will tell your friends about, similar like Elden Ring did. Like when the first Dragon I was about to beat deciced to jump into the water and got itself eaten by those hentai noodles. I can still recommend the game in some form because you can have fun with it but sadly most of the mechanics lack depth, story, characters and quests are nothing memorable. I know there is a "secret" ending but I did not care at the end. This results in a game that's mediocre at best.

Games I finished in 2024 Ranked